"John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar Council, said the industry was “outraged” by ARENA’s likely demise: “There is clearly an ideological agenda on behalf of the government to close down any climate- or renewable energy-related policy or support.”The council, which spent more than $350,000 in the WA Senate re-election, would now seek to raise triple that to target Coalition members in marginal seats at the next elections, Mr Grimes said.“People love solar, and more than 80 per cent want to see more solar,” he said. “For us this needs to become a political issue if we’re to turn this ship around."

"The Abbott government has given itself room to halve its $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund over the next four years.In a budget that delivered deep cuts to environment funding, the government will also reap at least $2 billion in savings through the scrapping of environmental agencies, including the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), and $400 million in cuts to Landcare.Axing the $1.3 billion ARENA takes with it another election promise, the delivery of 1 million solar roofs as part of the government's Direct Action climate policy to replace the carbon tax. The solar roofs policy has received no funding over the forward estimates.The proposed cash flow for the emissions reduction fund will raise eyebrows, with projected funding of about $1.1 billion over four years instead of the promised $2.55 billion."

Director of sustainable energy systems at the Australian National University, Professor Andrew Blakers, says the solar industry alone employs 15,000 people, many in regional areas."Wind and solar, for example, in large quantities, does not go in the cities," he said."They go in the rural areas and farmers benefit from hosting these wind and photovoltaic installations because they get paid a rent for their land and they continue farming. It's like a second cash crop."Then (there's) the local earth movers and the people who build roads and people who maintain these systems and install them. These are all people based in rural areas that depend on increasing the supply of renewable energy which, after all, is ARENA's main mission."

"The renewables race is one Australia should win. Ours is the sunniest continent on earth. Every year, we are gifted 58 million petajoules of free energy: ten thousand times our total use. We’re young, wealthy, stable and more-or-less civilised. We also have wind, hot rocks and a massive coastline of potential wave power, to even out the bumps."

"Distributed energy is the energy of dissent. Government may disapprove, as Hockey does of wind farms, but that’s the beauty of microgeneration. It doesn’t need government. We can do it ourselves."

"Financial news and data firm Bloomberg has warned the Federal Government that if it scraps Australia's renewable energy target it could cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in potential investment."

"While we quibble about the intermittency of renewables, industries in Spain and the US have invested billions in solar thermal plants, many of which store heat and produce electricity long after sunset. Given our abundant renewable resources, we should be leading the world in research and investment, instead Abbott would have us squander our competitive advantage and destroy massive economic potential."

"The attacks on renewable energy have been performed without mandate, justified by falsehoods and are economically counterproductive."

"Researchers at CSIRO and Abengoa Solar have achieved the highest temperature steam ever produced using energy from the sun, potentially delivering a boost to solar thermal efficiency.The 'supercritical steam' record was set in May at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle which has two test plants that concentrate light from 600 mirrors into receiver towers where water is heated to produce steam that drives turbines. Australian Renewables Agency chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said the achievement was a significant breakthrough."

"The federal government will consider selling the profitable loans business of the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation"

"The chief executive of the CEFC, Oliver Yates, said the agency, created in July last year, had so far lent $700 million and ''mobilised'' $2.5 billion when finance from the private sector into the same projects was included. It has $11 billion worth of projects in the pipeline.The cost of finance for the CEFC is roughly 3.5 per cent and it lends to renewable and energy efficiency projects at about 7 per cent. In less than 12 months, the agency is already covering its own costs and is forecast to deliver yearly profits of $200 million.''Right across Australia people are turning waste into energy, creating energy savings from manufacturing and the buildings they own,'' Mr Yates said."So selling a profitable business will help the so-called "budget emergency"?"Profitable" means that revenue helps the budget bottom-line.You can only sell an item once, profit may be indefinite.